TL;DR: WestNet cancelled our account without our consent or knowledge, who can we complain to?
On Thursday 20th Jan, we awoke to no internet, my wife alerted me to this around 8am, I did some basic rebooting of the NBN box, which resulted in the same situation, and tried again about an hour later. I had some personal errands to run, so went out and did those, the internet was still not connected when I returned home, so sent off an email to support at around 2PM. Got the standard email back saying they would reply within 24 hours, and a job number.
On Friday we still had no internet, so called support, got a call back around 40 mins later, when the person told me to do the reboot of the router, etc again. We went through all that, and he mentioned there was an issue with my account and he would need to put me through to provisioning; as I was transferred, I was hung up on, after around 40 minutes of talking through this issue. The issue still wasn't resolved, so called back again around 10am, another hour later, got the return call and spoke to another support guy, whom I spoke to for another half an hour, who said it had been escalated to provisioning; I got an email and SMS at that time saying the account had been transferred, as well as an email requesting feedback, and an SMS saying they were investigating the issue. Around 3pm sent another email asking for an update. Also called support again, got a call back almost 2 hours later, which lasted just over 10 minutes where he said this had been escalated and he couldn't see any further details.
On Saturday the 22nd, we still had no internet, so called again about 9:20, got a call back at close to 11am, the guy sounded like he had picked up the wrong line and hung up on me; I called back support again, they called back over an hour after that, when I got a similar message that it had been escalated and there wasn't much they could do; I got a call from the support person I was talking to on Friday, who was following up, after he told me they had automatically deleted my account because someone had requested my service be transferred (something of which I didn't instigate, nor have any knowledge about, but the email at around 11am on Friday was sent minutes before the account was deleted). He transferred me to provisioning and they stated they could re-activate my account, but I would need a new modem, and asked for payment up front, however he said if we do this, the account would be active within 2 to 4 hours after payment. I paid this amount by CC, including fees for shipping the new modem (something I wasn't sure I needed, and certainly wasn't looking for) and waited, expecting my account to be reactivated. I received a couple of SMS's about the transaction being successful, but around 7PM my account still wasn't active, I tried to call support around this time, but was faced with a potential 1 hour wait time, and I could't leave a message, so gave up for the day.
Early Sunday morning, at 7:20, placed another call to support, who said the information about 2 to 4 hours was wrong, and it would be 24 hours.
Monday morning, still without internet, called again at around 8:40, and they called back around 1 hour later, I first spoke to support, then got transferred to provisioning, then escalated the call to his supervisor, who said they can do nothing until the new modem is delivered. He pushed the priority of that up, but said it will still be (another) 24 to 48 hours. After the modem was delivered it would be another 2 to 4 hours to have the account activated.
Here we are on Tuesday, I still have no internet, I don't have the modem, and I'm pretty cheesed off. We are starting our sixth day of no internet, and I'm finding that WestNet support is pretty poor; currently I am between contracts, and any correspondence sent to my email is bouncing (as of Friday evening). I cannot get to my email to respond to anyone asking for interviews, not can I get to any sites for research on companies, or apply for position. Any financial statements sent to my email (for example, a bill, or an invoice) will be rejected and I won't know if I have outstanding payments required - which could incur late fees and could also potentially have my email address removed from a business, since it was rejected. Whilst we have no internet we have been using our 4G account and will be looking at an excess bill soon.
Besides WestNet, whom should I complain to? Is it fair to ask for compensation, and what is reasonable to ask for?
EDIT1: added TL;DR
EDIT2: Tuesday 6PM, modem hasn't arrived. They guarantee it will arrive tomorrow morning, but this wouldn't be the first time they have broken their promise.
jv alt account?
CoMpEnSaTiOn
FTFY